1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a device and a method for producing shaped meat portions from whole natural meat pieces, which includes two separate sub-processes carried out one after the other: On the one hand meat pieces are checked and are brought to a target weight without any shaping cutting being required, and on the other hand meat pieces are checked and are transformed into a predefined, three-dimensional product.
This method includes the following method steps:                introducing pieces of whole natural meat into a processing line,        rejecting those meat pieces which do not reach a desired weight of the meat portions, or combining clusters of meat pieces from individual meat pieces having a fraction of the desired weight,        cutting those meat pieces having a weight which exceeds a desired weight of the meat portions,        selecting those meat pieces or clusters of smaller meat pieces having a weight which corresponds to a desired weight,        freezing the selected meat pieces to form frozen meat portions, and        shaping the frozen meat portions by placing them in a shaping cavity and pressing them or pressing and punching them to form the shaped meat portions.        
This method is intended to encompass the processing of all types of natural meat, in particular beef, pork, mutton, lamb, game, poultry or fish, including the respective offal.
2. Description of the Related Art
In the food industry, it is known to cut natural meat pieces to the correct weight and shape in one single step. This is carried out for example by cutting by a water jet or conventionally using knives. One disadvantage here is that a large quantity of off-cuts or undesired products are obtained which cannot be used in the rest of the process. Furthermore, the height profile of the product can be controlled only to a limited extent.
A method of this type is known from DE 101 64 637 A1. In this method, whole natural meat pieces are sorted and cut to size where necessary so that the required portions can be produced. If the minimum weight is not reached, a number of smaller meat pieces are processed together.
However, this known method has the disadvantage that the customer often asks for a piece of meat which includes not several parts but rather one single piece of natural meat. The reason for this may lie on the one hand in the notion expressed by the subsequent end customer that the meat should be in one piece “like an wiener schnitzel”, and on the other hand in the risk that the individual parts will fall apart again during the subsequent cooking process.
A disadvantage of the known methods is that too many off-cuts are obtained which cannot be used in the process if the portion or portions are to be made from just one single piece. The present invention overcomes this disadvantage in that the weight control and shape control are carried out in separate sub-processes. This results in much lower restrictions with regard to the shape of the meat portions during weight control and/or a much higher flexibility when designing the three-dimensional final shape than in the known methods.
However, if the part that is too small cannot be made up to the desired weight by adding another part, then it is only possible to use those parts which right from the start either already have precisely the required size or which exceed the desired weight, so that the desired weight can be achieved by cutting off part of the natural meat.
Another disadvantage of this method is that the natural meat pieces are cut to the correct weight, with the size of the piece initially playing only a subordinate role. A very thin piece could thus pass the weight check and would then be deep-frozen, even though this piece would not really be suitable for the shaping process in the shaping machine since, due to the fact that its width is much too large, it cannot be pressed into the shaping cavity without part of the product shearing off and thus no longer being further processed. This would mean that the required quantity of meat would no longer be contained in the end product, thereby giving rise to a quality problem.
DE 101 41 989 A1 discloses a method for punching a meat portion having a defined size out of a mass preshaped into a slab. In this method, the desired pieces are punched out of the slab-shaped material already in the subsequently desired shape, for instance a round disc for a special hamburger.
The disadvantage of this method is that, particularly in the case of smaller pieces, the slab of material is naturally very small so that usually only one piece can be punched out of the raw material, while the remainder which cannot be used has to be supplied to another method, even though the total quantity of the processed piece would have provided sufficient volume for a second piece.
A similar method is also known from DE 10 2005 016 159 A1, in which again a number of sub-pieces are combined to form a common part, from which the individual shaped bodies can then be punched out.
Also generally known is a method in which the natural meat piece is rolled in a first step to form a flat shaped piece, and the desired shape is cut out in a second step. The disadvantages of this method are the poor control of the shape of the end product, the reduced possibility of obtaining a genuine three-dimensional product, and the fact that there is still a large quantity of off-cuts which cannot be used in the further process.